Letters to the Editor
tomreedtoon
Published Letters: 805 Editor's Choice: 81
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The problem is the "double tracking" of the NRA.
[Read the article: Shooting his mouth off]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, for the record, I have never fired a genuine firearm, and I gave away the pistol my dad gave me for "self defense." I gave it away because, when I was robbed and tied up, I realized that if the thieves found my pistol it would be used on me. However, I have a brother who owns many firearms, and hunts and uses them responsibly. Now that this stuff is cleared...
The NRA has been using Tom Wolfe's famous "double tracking" for decades; saying two things simultaneously to signify two different things. Yes, they have promoted responsible firearm use, hunting conservation and all that. But at the same time, they've promoted how firearms are used in self-defense against criminals and home invaders. There's very little deer hunted in the streets of Miami...so guess for what purpose most of those guns are sold.
They've been playing both factions, obviously trying to get "all gun owners" under their wing. But that also means that the modest people who hunt game for food, sport or whatever are associated with the drive-by shooters and the NFL players who feel it necessary to pack heat when they party. Their only mutual factor is that they're firearm owners, but that's a tie that no gun owners I've ever heard of has tried to break.
As a result, those hunters are upset over any kind of gun control, seeing a domino theory. They imagine themselves as being under a Nazi regime. "First they took away our automatic machine guns, and I didn't complain, because I can't afford one...and then they took the Uzis from the gangbangers, and I didn't protest, because I'm not black..." And then the final verse: "And then they came for my handgun, and there was nobody to help me blow away the bastards of the Trilateral Commission."
It's a politics of fear that has been going on longer, and more successfully, than that generated after September 11. But politics run on fear can start eating its own. Mr. Zumbo is a good example - he didn't keep to the True Faith that insists on the purity of the bullet, no matter for what it is used.
(It goes without saying that the NRA is speaking for the people who advertise heavily in its magazine and support it, the firearm industry. Have they ever said anything against Remington or Smith & Wesson?)
And as for the article...it did contain technical information that anyone really concerned about firearms should know. The fact that a simple, non-automatic rifle has a longer range and a more devastating impact than the machine pistols everyone is drooling after indicates the author is operating out of actual knowlege, not mythology - and there's myth-making on behalf of the gun lobby and the anti-gun lobby alike. (Curious that one poster suggested that this is knowledge that nobody should ever want to know, that it should be banned from human existence. I wonder if he/she feels the same about sex education.)
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From "chickens" to "whor..." No, I refuse to say it.
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Havrilesky seems to be trying to achieve the journalistic stance of Maureen Dowd - namely, "she hates everybody." Her readers, older women, hot girls...it's a fascinating pathology she exhibits. Even worse, in some kind of Tourette's variation, she picks up a phrase...a phrase simultaneously contemptuous and free of real-world reference...and says it over and over.
For anyone who has been conscious for more than a decade, with an interest in history, the Pussycat Dolls are just the latest version of the Sex Goddess. It is a perfectly legitimate way for a woman to get attention in show business, if handled properly. But after getting that attention, if they don't have anything besides sex to provide, their career arc goes groundward pretty fast.
Compare Marilyn Monroe to Jayne Mansfield. Regardless of the comparative shortness of both their lives, their status in people's minds are very different. Monroe at least tried to bring something more than sex to some of her roles; she didn't impress the Academy or Tony Curtis, but she showed vulnerability and authenticity in Bus Stop and The Misfits. Mansfield, whose sexual display was so coarse that it seemed almost dysfunctional, looked phony in her own melodramatic film, Single Room Furnished. Both died tragically and messily; only one is remembered decades after her death.
Do the Dolls mean anything besides "Look at me" to anyone? I haven't followed them, but I'll bet a garbage pizza they have some kind of press release that claims their bimbo behavior "empowers women." And that press release will be quoted about five years from now, when they end up dead and The Insider comments on their tragic lives with a barely suppressed sneer. I suppose they had to be mocked now; their decline will come so fast there won't be time to comment.
But the Dolls represent a big, unfortunate trend. Havrilesky, disconnected as she is, hasn't noticed what's in in the window of that toy shop across the street from her frappee cappucino shop. The Pussycat Dolls' behavior is sold to prepubescent girls as the Bratz, dolls with half-closed come-hither eyes and lots and LOTS of ghetto ho bling. Beyond selling sexuality to young girls, completely without context, the materialism of the Bratz makes Barbie look like a Trappist monk. And they're animated with creepy CGI and broadcast on the Fox network - apparently with the full approval of Rupert Murdoch and Bill O'Reilly.
The selling of this kind of sex is a serious concern, not just for feminists or drinkers of overpriced pretentious caffein, but for anyone who thinks women should be more than just...and again I refuse to use that awful phrase. Maybe someday a better writer on Salon will contribute a decent article on the subject.